Tribune News Service

'Biosphere' is a different kind of apocalypse movie

There are so many different and varied flavors of the apocalypse film: the bombast and spectacle of a disaster movie à la Roland Emmerich, or the punky desert chic of a “Mad Max” movie. But there’s also the lo-fi take, the kind of stripped-down indie films in which a couple of isolated people experience the apocalypse from afar, with themes of life, death and survival that resonate in a more existential, philosophical register, rather than the action-packed flicks that imagine the end of the world as something more immediate and violent. Mel Elsyn’s directorial debut “Biosphere” fits squarely ...

Semiautobiographical 'Forty-Year-Old Version' is rarest of films: funny, wry, incisive, sexy and sincere

What does it mean to be an artist? What does it mean to sell out? Who do we make art for, especially in a capitalist market? These are just a few of the complicated issues that writer/director/producer/star Radha Blank takes on in her semiautobiographical debut feature “The Forty-Year-Old-Version.” But she approaches these heavy-duty questions about art and identity with featherweight touch, and her voice is so cutting, compassionate, and clear, it’s like oxygen. She makes it look so easy, it’s no wonder the film won the directing prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.There’s a refreshingly...

Movies need more diversity

I love watching movies. All movies. Even movies in black and white that have all-white casts. And I love movies that have people who look like me, Black and LGBTQ, in them, too.Movies don’t have to have folks of my race/ethnicity as stars. I love “Crazy Rich Asians,” which came out in 2018. But I’d rather see a poorly executed movie with a diverse cast, in terms of gender and race/ethnicity, than one with mostly or only straight white people.And why isn’t blind casting more of a thing? Like in 2017, when Anthony Revolori from Guatemala was cast as a white character from the comic book, in “Spi...

New on DVD: 'John Lewis: Good Trouble' follows life of beloved civil rights icon

A documentary featuring an American legend tops the new DVD releases for the week of Sept. 29.“John Lewis: Good Trouble”: Rep. John Lewis died in July, leaving a breathtaking legacy. Known for marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on 1965’s Bloody Sunday to protest voting discrimination against Black people and risking his life amid deadly police beatings, his more than 40 arrests during the civil rights movement protesting segregation, and decades of work toward legislation in these areas as well as health care and gun reform (just to name a few), Lewis is affectionately profiled in the do...

'Biosphere' is a different kind of apocalypse movie

Semiautobiographical 'Forty-Year-Old Version' is rarest of films: funny, wry, incisive, sexy and sincere

Movies need more diversity

New on DVD: 'John Lewis: Good Trouble' follows life of beloved civil rights icon